Sacramento hotel workers approve strike option, joining national movement

Workers at the Sheraton Grand Hotel downtown authorized their union to call a strike, should contract negotiations fail. The union is the latest in a series of hotel guilds to push back against yearslong staffing shortages.

The vote passed with 97% of workers in favor, the union said Wednesday evening. The vote does not mean that a strike will occur immediately, but gives the union bargaining team the ability to call a strike if the company and the guild fail to agree on a contract.

The previous contract expired at the end of June. The union has been pushing for a new deal that raises wages, adds predictability to workers’ schedules and reduces the additional workloads employees took on during pandemic-era staffing shortages.

“For the workload, the wages just do not entice people to stay,” said Aamir Deen, president of Unite Here Local 49. “So there just needs to be a really significant change in the workload and the wages together, if this job’s going to be sustainable, and if Sacramento’s guests are going to be taken care of the way we all believe they should be.”

Sheraton is a brand of Marriott International. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Why staffing shortages are a sticking point in labor contracts

Should the union call a strike, it would be the latest in a series that the union has launched nationally this summer against Marriott, Hilton Worldwide and Hyatt Hotels. Contracts covering 40,000 hotel workers represented by Unite Here are set to expire this year, and workers have walked out in dozens of cities to draw attention to their complaints about wages and staffing shortages.

The union has contended that hotels have prolonged the staffing shortages of the COVID-19 era. While guests have returned, the guild has said, staffing levels have remained low, leaving the remaining employees with unmanageable workloads. Unite Here Local 49 is now pushing to add language to its contract around workload and staffing levels.

It’s not uncommon for workers to attempt to solidify such rules in their contracts, said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies labor issues. Unions in the manufacturing industry have pushed for contract language around workload and employment levels in the past, and in the last five years nurse unions have fought for hospitals to adopt language around nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.

But such efforts are often unsuccessful. Employers are reluctant to relinquish control of decisions around where to expand and where to reduce their business.

“They can kind of cede ground on benefits levels and wages. But in terms of where to expand their business or where to retreat, that’s really seen as under their control, and their control only,” Rosenfeld said. “So it can oftentimes be a really contentious bargaining point.”

Carmen Riestra, a uniform attendant at the Sheraton, said that with fewer people working her schedule has become unpredictable. Riestra, 57, of Sacramento, has to pick up shifts she normally wouldn’t, and doesn’t know what her schedule will look like week-to-week.

Maria Melgoza, 76, of West Sacramento, said she has a heavy workload as a housekeeper. Plus, the job doesn’t pay enough to cover living costs in the current economy, but she earns too much to qualify for public assistance.

The Sheraton workers unionized soon after the hotel opened about 20 years ago, and members protested in front of the hotel in 2022 to draw attention to wages and staffing levels. But organizers said this week marks the first time the groups’ relationship has escalated to a strike authorization vote.

“These strikes seem to be kind of a long time coming, in many ways,” said Rosenfeld, the sociologist. Across the country, he added, hotel staffing levels feel stuck in 2021, while other industries have fully returned to normal operations.

“It’s no surprise at all that front desk staff, housekeepers — hotel workers of all sorts — are now fed up and frustrated,” he said. “Because I think they’ve been waiting a long time to get back to the pre-pandemic normal.”